Service personalization with familiarity sensitivity

Abstract

Personalized services often utilize individual profiles, such as social network profiles, product purchase histories, or browsing histories. However, personalization may exhibit or imply a familiarity level between the service and the individual that is beyond the individual's comfort level. Presented herein are techniques for adapting personalized services to request supplemental individual information only within a current familiarity stage that has been established by the individual with the service, and only to provide a requested usage of a service. Such solicitation may inform the individual of the intended usage of the requested information. Usages that may involve more sensitive information may be predicated upon requesting and receiving individual consent from the individual to advance to a higher familiarity stage. The user may be permitted to provide individual consent to advancing to a higher familiarity stage only for a particular service, and/or only temporarily for a particular usage of the service.

What is claimed is: 
     
       1. A method of adapting provision of a service, the method comprising:
 identifying supplemental individual information that both relates to the usage of the service and is absent from a profile of an individual, the supplemental information having a familiarity level relating to a level of privacy with which the individual consents to dispense when engaging the service; 
 identifying a privacy level threshold established by the individual with the service, the privacy level threshold reflecting a level of privacy with which the individual consents to dispense when engaging the service; 
 determining whether the familiarity level of the supplemental information satisfies the privacy level threshold, the supplemental individual information satisfying the privacy level threshold if previously disclosed information to which the individual had consented shares the familiarity level; and 
 requesting, if a result of the determining is affirmative, the supplemental individual information from the individual. 
 
     
     
       2. The method of  claim 1 , wherein a result of the determining is affirmative when the supplemental individual information is on a comparable level of familiarity with that of previously disclosed information. 
     
     
       3. The method of  claim 1 , further comprising:
 receiving requested supplemental individual information; 
 determining whether the received supplemental information exceeds the threshold level established by the individual with the service; and 
 discarding the supplemental individual information when a result of the determining whether the received supplemental information exceeds the threshold level is affirmative. 
 
     
     
       4. The method of  claim 1 , further comprising maximizing the usage of the service for the individual in the absence of the supplemental individual information, before the requesting. 
     
     
       5. The method of  claim 1 , wherein:
 the profile is structured according to at least two familiarity stages, and 
 the method further comprises storing the higher familiarity stage in the profile, upon receiving from the individual an individual consent to advance to a higher familiarity stage; and 
 the requesting further comprises requesting from the individual only the supplemental individual information that is within the higher familiarity stage of the individual profile. 
 
     
     
       6. The method of  claim 5 , wherein the familiarity level is represented as a familiarity stage selected from a familiarity stage set comprising:
 an anonymous familiarity stage comprising an absence of information about the individual; 
 an impersonal familiarity stage comprising information disclosed by the individual in a current interaction; 
 a semi-familiar familiarity stage comprising non-sensitive information about the individual; and 
 a familiar familiarity stage comprising sensitive information about the individual. 
 
     
     
       7. The method of  claim 5 , further comprising:
 prioritizing respective usages of the service according to the familiarity stage of the usage; and 
 between a first usage and a second usage involving a higher familiarity stage than the familiarity stage of the first usage, performing the first usage before the second usage. 
 
     
     
       8. The method of  claim 5 , further comprising, upon identifying supplemental individual information relating the usage of the service and having a familiarity stage that is not within the selected familiarity stage of the individual profile:
 requesting, from the individual, an individual consent to advance the selected familiarity stage to a higher familiarity stage of the usage of the service; and 
 advancing the selected familiarity stage to the higher familiarity stage of the usage of the service, upon receiving the individual consent from the individual. 
 
     
     
       9. The method of  claim 5 , wherein:
 respective services are associated with an individual profile domain; 
 the profile further comprises a selected familiarity stage for respective individual profile domains of the individual profile; 
 the requesting the supplemental individual information further comprises:
 identifying the selected familiarity stage of the individual profile domain of the service; and 
 requesting from the individual the supplemental individual information within the selected familiarity stage of the individual profile domain of the service; and 
 
 each individual profile domain is a topic with associated related information. 
 
     
     
       10. A system for providing a service to an individual having a profile specifying a familiarity threshold established by the individual with the service, the system comprising:
 a user interface that informs the individual of usage of supplemental individual information by the service; and 
 a service informant that, upon receipt of a request for a usage of a service with a profile involving supplemental individual information that is absent from the profile:
 determines whether a familiarity level of the supplemental individual information is less than or equal to the familiarity threshold established by the individual, the familiarity threshold established by the user reflecting a comfort level of the individual with sharing information when engaging the service, the familiarity level of the supplemental individual information being less than or equal to the familiarity threshold established by the individual if information of which the individual previously consented to disclose shares the familiarity level of the supplemental information; and 
 requests, if a result of the determining is affirmative, the supplemental individual information from the individual. 
 
 
     
     
       11. The system of  claim 10 , wherein the service informant, upon receiving requested supplemental individual information with a familiarity level that is higher than the familiarity threshold, refrains from using the supplemental individual information to provide the service for the individual. 
     
     
       12. The system of  claim 10 , further comprising an individual profile generator that, upon receiving supplemental individual information with a familiarity level that is lower than the familiarity threshold, stores the supplemental individual information in the individual profile. 
     
     
       13. The system of  claim 12 , wherein the individual profile generator comprises an inferrer that:
 infers an individual detail about the individual that is within a familiarity level that is lower than the familiarity threshold; and 
 stores the individual detail in the individual's profile. 
 
     
     
       14. The system of  claim 13 , wherein the user interface infers the individual detail about the individual by:
 presenting in an option set
 a personalized option that is associated with the individual detail, and 
 a non-personalized option that is not associated with the individual detail; and 
 
 detecting higher individual interest of the individual in the personalized option than in the non-personalized option. 
 
     
     
       15. A memory device storing instructions that, when executed on a processor of a computer, causes the execution of a method of adapting provision of a service, the method comprising:
 identifying supplemental individual information that both relates to the usage of the service and is absent from a profile of an individual, the supplemental information having a familiarity level relating to a level of privacy with which the individual consents to dispense when engaging the service; 
 identifying a privacy level threshold established by the individual with the service, the privacy level threshold reflecting a level of privacy with which the individual consents to dispense when engaging the service; 
 determining whether the familiarity level of the supplemental information satisfies the threshold privacy level threshold, the supplemental individual information satisfying the privacy level threshold if previously disclosed information to which the individual had consented shares the familiarity level; and 
 requesting, if a result of the determining is affirmative, the supplemental individual information from the individual. 
 
     
     
       16. The memory device of  claim 15 , wherein the profile includes a set of familiarity stages, each familiarity stage:
 indicating a respective familiarity for which the individual has provided consent to disclose information with the service; and 
 defining which portions of the profile that may be shared with the service in response to the requesting. 
 
     
     
       17. The memory device of  claim 15 , wherein the method further comprises, upon receiving supplemental individual information about the individual that is not within the current familiarity level:
 discarding received supplemental individual information; and 
 refraining from using received supplemental individual information while providing the service for the individual. 
 
     
     
       18. The memory device of  claim 15 , wherein the method further comprises, upon receiving from the individual a refusal to provide the supplemental individual information in response to the requesting, providing the service for the individual without the received supplemental individual information. 
     
     
       19. The memory device of  claim 15 , wherein the method further comprises, upon detecting a reduced familiarity level established by the individual with the service:
 reexamining the profile to identify an individual detail that exceeds the reduced familiarity level; and 
 removing the individual detail from the profile. 
 
     
     
       20. The memory device of  claim 15 , further comprising:
 upon determining that the supplemental individual information is not within the current familiarity level, requesting consent from the individual to advance to a higher familiarity stage that encompasses the supplemental individual information for only a specified requested usage of the service; 
 providing only the specified requested usage of the service; and 
 returning to a lower familiarity stage, after the providing. 
 
     
     
       21. The method of  claim 1 , wherein the requesting includes options for disclosing and not disclosing the supplemental individual information.